Domeka Parker, a 36-year-old Portland actress and teacher, has been diagnosed with agressive breast cancer. Despite the cliches, she admits that laughter actually is good medicine.
(Jamie Hale/The Oregonian)

Domeka Parker admits she's one of those people who has made jokes about cancer. It's not usually fodder for comedy, but Domeka is a teacher and performer of improvisational theater -- a fearless art
where no topic is sacred, not even cancer.

And as it turns out, the terrifying disease has been the talk of the improv-theater
community lately after Domeka, well-known in both the improvisational and scripted
theater worlds, was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer last month. The
jokes she made in the past are now a very sobering truth in her personal life. "It
really has shifted the reality of cancer, or it's shifted cancer from a kind of
concept to a reality," she said.

That reality is grim, but her comrades in the improv and
theater scenes have circled around Domeka, bringing her food, offering help
around the house and throwing three
separate benefit shows this spring to offset the costs of her medical
bills. Her doctor has warned her to prepare for a double mastectomy and the
removal of both ovaries, but the positivity that surrounds the 36-year-old
actress has helped drown out the fearful noise.

"THIS WEEK I'M
CRYING"

It's been only three weeks since Domeka was
diagnosed with breast cancer.

"The first week I was in total shock and a little scared,"
she said. "The second week was chemo so I was sick, very sick. And nobody can
prepare you for that kind of sick." Her partner, Ken Bryan, had aggressive
cancer in his thirties as well, but he still can't prepare Domeka for the
hard road that lies ahead.

"This week I'm crying a lot and feeling my mortality,"
Domeka said. "Not in a way that I think I'm going to die -- because I don't
think I am -- but the possibility of it is there, and that's pretty
overwhelming."

Domeka Parker directs a show at the Brody Theater last year.
Jamie Hale/The Oregonian

Domeka's face, still full of zest beneath her now
close-cropped head of hair, is familiar in the Portland scene. She grew up in
traditional theater circles, but has gained recognition internationally for her
improvisational skills. She's taught at the Brody Theater and other venues for years, mentoring
actors who have since become mainstays themselves. Ask anyone and they'll tell
you she's a workhorse: teaching, performing, leading and always trying to
challenge conventions.

Her work ground to a frightening halt after she noticed a
lump in the shower a few weeks back. She went to the doctor on a Friday, and by
the end of the day she was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma, a common
form of breast cancer that plagues nearly 200,000 women each year. The
treatment is chemotherapy first, then surgery, when they'll decide whether or
not Domeka will keep her breasts and her ovaries.

But it's not the fear of physical deformity or even death
that most haunts the actress; it's the fear of not teaching or performing that keeps
her up at night. "My biggest fear, the first thing that hit me when they said I
had cancer, was that I wasn't going to be able, that I wasn't going to have the
energy, to teach," she said. "Teaching is what feeds my soul, so that seemed
like a real terrible separation of things. The one thing that I needed the most
I wasn't going to be able to do."

A LAUGHING MATTER

Domeka describes herself as an actress, a teacher and a
mentor, but she leaves out a title that a lot of people know her by: comedian.
The word can be a vulgarity around improvisational theaters, not because it's
untrue -- much of improv is funny, and many improvisers also do sketch and stand
up comedy -- but because it ignores the fact that improvisational theater isn't
necessarily comedy.

Improviser Tom Johnson founded the Brody Theater on that
very idea. "The core of my philosophy is on comedy and -- I've been saying this
for years -- is that funny is not the opposite of serious," he said. "I think
frivolous is the opposite of serious -- not taking something seriously. Funny
is serious spelled sideways."

Domeka Parker, a 36-year-old Portland actress and teacher, has been diagnosed with agressive breast cancer. Despite the cliches, she admits that laughter actually is good medicine.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian

With that philosophy in mind, actors at the Brody have
tackled serious topics as often as they have taken on lighthearted ones. They've dealt
with death, divorce, deceit, cowardice and, of course, cancer.

But comedy and cancer don't always mix well. British
comedian Jennifer Saunders, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009,
caught fire last year after joking that some cancer patients enjoy the
attention. Cancer can be tricky territory to tread, but that doesn't mean it
has no place in comedy.

"Comedy deals with -- when it's really doing its job as art --
deals with things people have difficulty dealing with in their everyday lives.
Comedy is allowed to bring them out in the open in ways that other kinds of
discussion can't do," Johnson said. "Not that we're going to be putting on a whole
run of cancer shows."

Anger and hurt feelings sometimes arise when making jokes about cancer is
confused with making light of it. It's a serious diagnosis and a very grave
process -- something that Domeka Parker and Jennifer Saunders won't soon forget -- but what people tend to ignore is that laughter really is good medicine.

"I honestly thought that was so cliché before this
happened," Domeka said. "I agreed that laughter makes us feel good but I didn't
know that laughter would almost literally, not literally, but almost literally
get me through something hard in this way."

She and her family are also hoping that laughter helps with
the mounting medical bills. The Brody Theater is planning three benefits for
Domeka: A performance on Sunday, March
16, an art auction on Thursday,
April 3, and another show on Saturday,
April 19. Those proceeds, along with donations
to Domeka's online YouCaring account, will go toward helping her through the
tough financial slog.

The humor is a necessity because the financial reality is just as rough as the medical one: The
average cost to treat breast cancer is somewhere between
$20,000 and $100,000. Domeka tries to pay her bills with income teaching improv, buoyed by Ken's commission-based job at Cascade Radon. Her copays are down thanks to her new insurance from the federal healthcare exchange, but the costs are still enormous.

Even more sobering is the fact that nearly 40,000 breast cancer patients pour tens of thousands of dollars into hospital bills each year, only to die regardless.
She might joke, but Domeka definitely isn't making light of her recent
diagnosis.

"This is really, really hard and it's really, really scary,
and it's not just scary for me, it's scary for everybody who loves me, and a
lot of people who don't," Domeka said. "But it's also useful, and I intend
to find the ways that it's useful and use it ... I refuse to have cancer and not
get something good out of it."